Is anybody out there?!

Hellllllllllllllllooo!!! I have not posted in so long!!Where to start? Well first off the internet cafe I am in is playing country music....thats new. I am used to Celine Dion and Justin Bieber.....but country...really Tanzania?? I went to the most amazing training at the end of June. The training was called Zinduka and it was a week long. Ten volunteers went and we took 2 coaches. It's a 5-10 week program (depending how many days a week you do it) you do with about 25-30 youth of your village. It teaches all about HIV/AIDS, safe sex etc through a serious of games like soccer. It is such a fantastic program, I can't wait to get started in my village,not to mention my coaches are spectacular!! The coaches run most of the practices and I'll be there to do energizers and support them....that way when my time here is done they will be comfortable enough to keep doing the program without me.Gotta love sustainability. Here is a pic of my coaches (they are both teachers) and I.

Oh Tanzanians and their picture taking. They rocked the training though, such great coaches. They guy on the right is also my counterpart. A counterpart is someone in your village you helps you get y your projects started, deal with the logistics of dealing with the village gov't and to really help you get your point across...it's hard with language and cultural barriers. My counterpart is just about the best thing that has happened to me since I have been here. Not only is he great at helping get projects started and helping me prepare lessons for school, he is my best friend in my village. He is so westernized, he speaks prefect English and is pretty up to date with the slang as well.We teach each other about our cultures, help each other with language- alot of our convos Ill be speaking Swahili while he answers in English. He is also a great cook, so when we arent doing work we are probably at his place watching really bad Tanzo soap operas or music videos chowing down on ugali na mboa. Have I ever mentioned I eat with my hands here? yeah, no silverware needed.
Anyways, after the Zinduka training me and about 10 other volunteers headed to southers Tanz and spent the 4th of July relaxing on Lake Malawi. It was so beautiful. Here is a pic.....ok its not letting me uplaod but you can check out my facebook for pics galore. We also went on a death hike to see this glorious
ft waterfall. We spent about 3 hours scowering (is that a word?) boulders.....if you didn't find your footing you could very well fall to your death. Pics of that on facebook too, since this computer is being dumb.

Oh, have I mentioned how much I love teaching Life Skills? Sure, I have my days when the kids wont listen and have trouble taking subjects seriously, but I really love working with the youth. It took me coming to Tanzania to figure out what I want to do with my life but here it is..work youth! It is so rewarding and I have the perfect personality for it.
It seems like letters are starting to dwindle now that I have been here for 9 months (9 MONTHS??!???) Please write me!! I miss you all.Sorry about the typing in this blog this keyboard is messedup.
Love,
Maria

Getting Started!

So I started teaching Life Skills at the secondary school. I can already tell that I am going to love teaching. These kids are stoked to learn about sex, condoms, stds and HIV/AIDS. I decided to start out teaching about peer pressure then work my way into everything else. Some of the kids are so bad! I set the ground rules my first day and they know they will be punished if they break them (NO talking when I am talking). Since I'm not really into beating the students with a stick I am going the route of making them hold  penny to the chalkboard with their nose.It works, they seem to respect me for the most part. I also have kids from other forms (grades) snaking into my class to listen. I don't know if it' because they want to learn or they just want to see the American chick teach in Swahili.

I also started a sports club for the youth. I also made sure to get the street kids, orphans and students all involved as well as boys and girls.  I decided since they mostly just play soccer that it would be fun to introduce them to kickball. I thought it would be easy but let me tell you that this was one of the hardest things I have done here.A bunch of kids showed up to play but introducing  foreign concept to them was really something...."we use our hands AND our feet?". After literally 5 minutes kids started leaving saying it was too hard but eventually the ones that stuck around got it and loved at. After the kids who left saw them playing and loving it some of them came back.I have my second meeting/game today so we will see how it goes.

The previous volunteer started a group of OVC (orphans and vulnerable children) caretakers. They make school uniforms and such and sell them. I have started going to those meetings too, getting them back up and running.

My Swahili is ummm gradually getting better. I don't think I'll ever bee 100% fluent though, we shall see. My relationship with my village is better then ever. I seem to have a good rapport with people of all ages. It took a while to differentiate myself from the volunteer that was here before me. She was the first PCV in the village so when I arrived most of the villagers assumed we wold do things exactly the same. It's fun to teach them about American culture.
Thats all for now!

Pictures? Yeah, Pictures are good.

It has been bought to my attention that my blog is lacking pictures, what have I been thinking?! Here are some pics of my Tanzanian journey over the last 6 months.

This is my host family! They took care of me my first 9 weeks in country when I was Swahili-less ha, they thought me how to sweep (yea, it's different here) , how to do weird things with a bucket such as bathe and wash clothes and how to cook with the interesting little thing called a jiko

This is a jiko

This is me with my CBT....the people I spent 8 hours a day with 6 days a week in a 100+  degree room learning Swahili and all about Tanzanian culture. We became really close really quickly, they are my family.

Love these girls! Training was quite the experience, oh yea it was.

My host Mama and I sporting our gowns

Baobab tress are cool

My favorite tree! This picture barely does it justice. This was the week during training we got to shadow a current PCV.

MY host brother (far left) and his cousins. I love these kids, they taught me how to count in Swahili and all of the animal names. They even took me to meet the neighbors monkey.

 Another pic of my CBT, on Thanksgiving along with our teacher

My sitemates!! We are perfect for each other. My family keeps growing

My home for the next 2 years

The end, for now.

Five months in!!

Well, I have almost been in country for half a year! It absolutely blows my mind.I think the hardest aspect thus far has been adjusting to the Muslim culture/religion. The dress, polygamy,gender roles,how to present yourself in public and the 4am,4:30am and 6:00am call to prayer over a loudspeaker. The easiest adjustment thus far has been the "living in a fishbowl" aspect. All eyes on me all day, everyday. I always think of Finding Nemo when the girl is pounding on the fishbowl yelling "Fishy, wake up!!!" Only the Tanzanians are yelling Mzungu! Come here! Talk to me! I love meeting people, chatting, exchanging cultural lessons, playing with kids etc....but believe me it is all day everyday no matter what physical or mental state you are in, I just tend to deal with it really well.

Some days are really slow and I can catch up on some Dexter or reading, while other days it starts off at the clinic then off the the secondary school followed by the primary followed by a PLWA meeting followed by a village meeting, then I am exhausted and sound asleep by 9pm.

I have been baking a lot lately. I started off with cookies-PB, choc chip & sugar, then I moved on to bread- banana bread, mango bread, yummy garlicy buttery bread then I made cinnamon rolls. They were not the easiest to make but man were they delicious!! Next i want to make mango bars and maybe peanut butter pie.

I have also been on the looking for the most off the wall fabric to have dresses made out of. I found a chicken and egg fabric and a fish in a basket fabric and I want to buy them both and wear the dresses everywhere. Some people look for pretty fabric, but I prefer funny. I just copied a whole bunch of movies from an expat so I am off to watch Pineapple Express!
- I'll keep you posted!

Turning 30 in Tanzania and stuff.

Well yesterday was my 30th and it was a great day,I got to celebrate with about 8 of my fellow PCVs. We made mango ginger bucket wine that was delicious. We started off with a dance party at our guesti then hit the club.The DJ made the mistake of letting me have control of 2 microphones, for some reason today my voice is about gone.We danced for hours and hours, it was such a great birthday.I have tons of pics I need to post. On Wednesday we went to visit the missionaries they have lived in Tanzania for 15 years. Every time I go to their safi house I feel like I am in America. They made me a birthday dinner consisting of Mexican chicken,cornbread, beans, spinach salad with BACON and a cake with 4 layers.I stuffed myself to death.
Tomorrow morning I am heading back to my village. The village life is still going well. I am finishing up an assessment of what my village needs to present at a 2 week conference we have next month. I am pretty excited of the conference. I will get to see everyone again and I'll get teaching materials so I can start teaching life skills when I get back. That's all I have for now! I am an old lady

Karibu Tanzania

Well I had a sweet blog all written out to type up but I lost the notebook so....yeaaa. I have been at my site for a little over a month now! I LOVE my village. I am becoming mildly obsessed with the Tanzanian lifestyle. I enjoy going out to the village square in the evenings when everyone gets done farming and chilling in the coffee hut or just alongside the road in the grass for hours upon hours with my villagers.It's perfectly normal to see 2 guys or girls walking down the street holding hands or embracing but you will never see guy/girl pda. I fully take advantage of this with all my girlfriends. It's also a sign of respect to call an old man just that -Mzee, I like it.I now eat dinner around 9pm or later. During homestay I thought eating at 8pm was late. Now eating before 9 feels strange.Also, around 10am everyday everything closes for a chai break, and trust me, my belly knows when it's time for chai. How did I/will I ever live without the daily chai break? I also cant imagine sleeping without a mosquito net.

So a couple weeks ago I go into my banking town to meet up with one of my site mates. I arrive at the bus stand to meet her a couple hours early so I find a spot in the shade to read. One of the bus conductors (who I do not remember ever meeting) comes up like "Hey, Maria!!! Your friends bus gets in at 10 so come inside our office to pumzika and wait for her." When her bus arrives he says "oh she is right near the front so she will be off soon." It was so random. How does he know who I am waiting for and that she is in the front of the bus? It's so random but I suppose they always know what the wazungu are up to. The conductors must call each other as soon as they see us. I have to admit it's really convenient though.I will always know if a friends bus is running late or had problems. Also, so soon as I walk into the standi I hear "Maria Maria, njoo njoo(come here) So I never have a problem getting where I need to go and I pretty much get VIP treatment. Bus rides are always very interesting....packing 200 people onto a bus that holds 130.

It's not all fun and games here though. As much as I love my village I defiantly feel really isolated sometimes.I know I have said it before but it's a rollercoaster ride. The things I worried about when living in the US seem so petty now. Waking up in a village that wonders where they are going to get their water for the week makes "who Betty was with last night" seem really insipid.


Right now my daily schedule is something like wake up around 7am, buck bathe(maybe about twice a week), boil water to drink for the day, make oatmeal on the jiko, head over to the clinic around 8:30 to weigh babies, fill out charts or sit with the nurse as the sick & injured some in and help distribute medicine, have chai and chapati around 10:00 then back to the clinic, head to the primary school around 12 and visit the students and the teachers,eat lunch around 1:30 (ugali, beans, chai). Then the rest of the day I read, visit the villlage sit on my front porch with visitors,visit the youth at the pool table, hit up the coffee hut and learn the local language. Sometimes I go into the subvillages with the nurses to weigh babies. In February i will start giving presentations at the clinic about importance of boiling water, malaria, typhoid fever etc. I start teaching life skill sat the secondary school  in late March /early April. I really want to work with the youth outside of the classroom as well. On my daily pool table visits the youth have manged to steal a place in my heart, so I def want to start a youth club. We can meet up once or twice a month and talk about safe sex, stds, drug abuse and possibly start some income generating projects. Thursday I am also going to a womens group the previous volunteer started, I have lots of ideas for projects for them as well.This is all I have time for now! I lost my Swahili to English dictionary (kind of a big deal) so I am off the look for one. I miss everyone!!!
I'll keep you posted
-Maria

Pole sana bro! Mama yako, sasa nini.

 Hi everyone! SO,I got to my site about 2 weeks ago and it still seeems pretty surreal. My vil is huge! I still have not seen it all. I live right beside a clinic where I help weigh babies and will eventually give nutrition presentations to the Mamas. It's really beautiful with the picture perfect sky and rolling hills. My village has a huge water prblem though. I went to see the "river"where people get water and it's all sand with people digging holes to find water...and it's about 3 miles away from the vil, so that is some serious water choting. That is definatly a potential project for me. I drink coffee a few times a week with the wazee
 I already got a house girl. I swear to you ,I can sweep my house 5 times a day and still have a layer of dirt but she sweeps once it it's SO clean, and she gets my laundry cleaner then I ever could. Plus, she is going to ue the money I pay her to for secondary school so its a win win situation. My house is pretty safi for a PCV house. I lucked out. I am uploading pics as we speak but the computer is really slow. I'll probably only manage to get a few up... so pole sana bro.
It was really wierd to be away from my family for Christmas. I met up with about 7 other volunteers and we ha a blast, but it still wasnt the same as being with family. Right now I am in Moshi for New Years It's pretty safi here & I can see Mt. Kili. I am out of time! I'll upate more soon.
Love,
Maria